There are four principles you can live your life by:
- Truth is the pursuit of the scholar, the scientist, and the cynic: accurate, complete, and unsparing knowledge of ourselves and the world we live in.
- Utility is the goal of the economist, the engineer, and the politician: to make the world better by making the most of what it makes available to us.
- Justice is the project of the judge, the ethicist, and the activist: doing right by all by giving each what they deserve and have been denied.
- Beauty is the mission of the artist, the adventurer, and the epicure: it comprises the ineffable, the sublime, the fleeting, passion, peace, joy, transcendence, and infinitely more.
All of them are good, and all of them are important, but they are entirely incomparable. None of them can be found within the rest, and in their purest forms they utterly deny each others’ claims. To pursue one is always in part to turn from the others.
Every life has something of all four in them, but I have found that everyone steers by one in particular. It sparks their imagination and guides their actions. When they are in doubt, they look to it and find renewed purpose. When they are lost, they trust in it to light the way.
Which one is yours?